Samsung looks to be readying its next major Galaxy Watch OS smartwatch update, One UI 7 Watch based on Wear OS 6, but there are signs that Google Assistant won’t be part of the package.
According to an X (formerly Twitter) post from tipster Alfatürk, signs of the first One UI Watch 7.0 beta have appeared on Samsung’s servers under the build number L310XXU1ZYDA.
There’s no additional information on what this new version of Samsung’s wearable UI might contain. These are early days, after all, with One UI 6 Watch rolling out with the Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 in July of last year.
Wear OS 6, upon which One UI Watch 7.0 will be based, is likely to debut later this year on the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8, followed a few months later by the Google Pixel Watch 4.
More Gemini, less Assistant
While we don’t know what Samsung’s plans are with One UI 7 Watch, we have had some indication of the focus for the underlying Wear OS 6, on which Google and Samsung will be working closely together.
Previous reports have suggested that Google is looking to phase out its Google Assistant for the next version of Wear OS, with Gemini set to take its place. You can bet that Samsung will follow suit with its own tweaked take on the OS.
Indeed, Google may well have already started that process, with the news (via 9to5Google) that the Assistant app has been updated on the Google Play Store.
Mattias Inghe
While there are no sweeping changes here, Google has tweaked the two complications to remove any mention of Assistant as its own distinct entity. The Assistant complication is now simply called ‘Google’, with the signature Google Assistant logo replaced by a generic sparkle icon.
Meanwhile, the Assistant designation has also been removed from the At a Glance complication, with the logo replaced by the classic Google ‘G’.
There’s obviously a general effort here to excise Google Assistant from the Wear OS experience – seemingly ahead of the next version ditching it altogether in favour of the Gemini AI assistant. Don’t be surprised if the next smartwatches from Samsung and Google go all in with Gemini.
